View full sizeFileJim Radcliffe, Oregon's strength and conditioning coach, talks with Cliff Harris after last season's Rose Bowl defeat. The Ducks, in part because of Radcliffe's conditioning strategy, are playing at a pace this season that other teams have so far been unable to match.

EUGENE – In the first three quarters this season, Oregon has scored 405 points in 405 minutes. In the fourth quarter, the Ducks have outscored opponents 87-7.

Some teams hold up four fingers between the third and fourth quarters, as if to say the fourth quarter belongs to them. Maybe the Ducks should just hold up a fist.

To a man, the top-ranked Ducks credit that dominance to their superior conditioning. They appear so fast and so fit, able to run by an opponent and then squash them like a tired bug, that surely the man behind the conditioning has found some sort of fountain of health, right?

“We’re not really doing anything differently,’’ said Jim Radcliffe, the Ducks’ ridiculously fit strength and conditioning coach, with a smile.

Radcliffe has gotten numerous calls and e-mails from coaches looking to replicate Oregon’s up-tempo offense and conditioning program. Coach Chip Kelly said to copy the offense, a team better have Darron Thomas and LaMichael James – not that it’s a two-man team. He might want to throw the name Radcliffe in there, too.

“He was at every summer workout, he was at every winter workout,’’ offensive lineman Mark Asper said. “He’s the kind of guy you don’t want to let down. He’s got a look, an ‘I’m not angry at you, I’m disappointed in you’ look.’’

Radcliffe, 52, is in his 26th season at Oregon. He is a published expert in exercise and plyometrics, and he’s always looking for different ways to improve conditioning, to keep the Ducks sprinting in the lead as others try to catch up.

It’s true that the Ducks, who are 9-0 (6-0 Pacific-10 Conference) for the first time and who play at California on Saturday, aren’t really doing anything differently from last year. It’s just that the changes implemented last year are now paying off in a bigger way.

When Kelly took over as head coach before last season, he asked Radcliffe if he wanted to change anything about the team’s regimen. Indeed, Radcliffe wanted to shift the weekly workload. So before Kelly could “Win the Day,’’ those days had to be moved around a bit.

Starting immediately after that fourth quarter, the Ducks ice down. That helps them get ready to practice hard and very fast on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday became the light day, then the Ducks go hard again on Friday.

“Let’s reduce the inflammation from whatever bumps and bruises they have Saturday night, get ‘em some treatment on Sunday, so on Monday we can get more done in practice,’’ Radcliffe said. “Other teams go hard Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday then back off Friday. If you’re backing off on Friday, you’re really downloading when you want to be your fastest and quickest and strongest and most explosive. We want to be working back up to our peak on Saturdays.’’

There is no extra conditioning. Practice is conditioning, and the Ducks push the practice tempo further each week. So instead of hanging on and trying to stay healthy during the season, the Ducks are increasing their conditioning, playing even faster in November than they did in September.

“Everything is kind of building on top of itself, getting better and better, and we’re finding new and better ways all the time to get faster and to get better conditioned,’’ defensive lineman Brandon Bair said.

But why is the difference so apparent this season? As Radcliffe said, this routine is the same as it was a year ago, when Oregon outscored its opponents by unspectacular 76-52 in the fourth quarter.

It seems there are two reasons: Players are buying into it more, and those players who bought into it last season are a year ahead of everybody else.

“This is a special team to be around, as far as everybody taking everything very seriously,’’ offensive lineman Carson York said. “When I first got here, there was a very individualist attitude. In warm-ups, there’d be eight receivers on the warm-up bikes. Now, everybody’s doing everything they possibly can out here.’’

Then York, talking after one of Oregon’s breakneck practices, pointed to a corner of the Moshofsky Center and said, “This time last year, I would probably still be laying over there, gasping in the end zone.

“Usually in a season, you get through fall camp and you’re in the best shape you’ll be all season and in the regular season it sort of tails off. I’ve never been in this good a shape my entire life. Also, there’s definitely a sentiment on the team to take care of business a little more on Saturday night after the game.’’

Part of Radcliffe’s personal schedule involves driving his beloved 1966 Chevrolet pickup to practice every Tuesday. His father had a similar Chevy truck, and Radcliffe decided he had to have one.

“You couldn’t kill the thing,’’ he said. “If you can’t kill it, you might as well have one.’’

If Oregon’s offensive linemen don’t get pushed around, it’s partly because they have to push that big Chevy around during the summer.

“That thing has no plastic parts,’’ said Asper, who would have to push the Chevy up a hill with the other linemen, usually with someone in the driver’s seat applying the brakes, and Radcliffe would find somebody to sit in the truck bed.

“Sometimes he’d get a track girl to sit in the seat,’’ Asper said. “Other times, he’d have an injured lineman sitting in there. I mean, that’s a 200-pound swing!’’

And oh yes, they had to do it fast. Even the weightlifting is up-tempo, and with motion – Olympic-style, full-body lifts instead of the lie-on-a-bench kind. Radcliffe spends a lot of time on turning his athletes into mechanically efficient runners, too, working on burst and change of direction.

One thing he does not do is try to make distance runners out of them.

“That’s been my philosophy for years,’’ Radcliffe said. “Now, it really fits into what we’re doing.’’

In Radcliffe, Kelly found a way to push his team to go even faster. Add a new play signaling system, a deeper depth chart, an evolved defensive scheme and one year of experience in the program, and that begins to explain Oregon’s dominance so far in 2010.